


folie à deux

by bronigiri



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Relationship Reveal, Secret Relationship, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25024558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bronigiri/pseuds/bronigiri
Summary: Atsumu always believed there was nothing you couldn’t do if you tried. Losing just meant you needed to practice twice as hard. Failure just meant you lackedhungerfor success. But this? The ball is out of his court. If there is a scoreboard, it’s already broken, rigged so that neither of them can ever win.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Miya Osamu
Comments: 26
Kudos: 281





	folie à deux

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-timeskip. Please heed the tags for CWs.

It’s not a regular family dinner.

Atsumu knows that right off the bat. For all that people call him a volleyball idiot, he’s more perceptive than he lets on. He’d lived with Mom and Dad for the first eighteen years of his life— he recognizes the taut line of his father’s mouth, the forced, calm smile that his mother wears and the way she wrings her hands as she prepares dinner. They’re upset about something. Probably something he and Osamu did, judging by the way their dad’s gaze flickers between them while their mom refuses to look them in the eye.

Well, alright then. At least this was better than only _one_ of them getting yelled at. Atsumu braces himself and keeps his gaze fixed on the photograph across the room, sitting in a wooden frame on the shelf next to the TV. A trip to Tokyo Disneyland when they were seven years old, four beaming smiles taking up nearly the entire frame. Atsumu and Osamu are paused mid-fight, one respective fist in the other’s hair, as they smile for the camera. 

Atsumu doesn’t usually eat large portions, preferring to measure his calories and nutrition intake, but he chows down what he can, hoping the cold look in his mother’s eyes will dissipate. She’s always loved cooking for others, a trait she shares with Osamu. Atsumu and their father, on the other hand, cook and eat to live.

It doesn’t work. He just feels weirdly bloated and even more anxious. Her smile when he praises her cooking is tight, and she still won’t look him in the eye. Atsumu looks over at Osamu, and Osamu shrugs, just as confused.

The gaze Atsumu and Osamu exchange seems to set something off in their mother. She stands up, her chair screeching as it scrapes against the tile floor of the kitchen. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” she says. To their father, she says, “You tell them.”

“But I—”

She stalks off to the bedroom. 

_What the hell?_ Atsumu thinks at Osamu.

 _No idea,_ the look in Osamu’s eyes sends back.

“Would you stop that?”

Both of their heads snap up to look at their father, whose fists are clenched tight. He’s gotten out of his chair, too, so Atsumu and Osamu follow his lead. 

“I didn’t want to do this. Your mother was the one who brought it up. But—” he sighs in frustration and fishes his phone out of his pocket. He fiddles with it a bit, opening up a photograph, and then slides it across the table. “I’m going to need you to explain this. What the hell is going on here?”

Atsumu peers at the phone screen, and then immediately wishes he hadn’t. The chopsticks in his hand clatter to the floor, and he wants to throw up everything he’s eaten in the past half hour.

It’s a photo of him and Osamu, their lips locked together in a heated, passionate kiss. It’s taken from far enough away that it looks a bit grainy, but close enough that the scene unfolding is clear. Atsumu has his arm braced against the wall, head tilted to the side, mouth half-open as Osamu meets him halfway, one hand buried in his hair and the other at the nape of his neck.

They’d just won the game against the Adlers. Atsumu's spike had scored the match point, with Hinata setting to him. Heady with victory and the desire to share the joy bursting through him, he’d gotten careless enough to kiss Osamu then and there. Shaded by the wall of the building, hidden by the dumpsters, blocked from the view of any onlookers in the far corner of the parking lot. Or so he’d thought. 

“Where did you find this? How long ago was it posted?” Panic spikes through Atsumu’s blood. If the press found out— 

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Their father never shouts, but this is the closest he has come in years to doing so. “It’s not posted online. Your aunt Naoko stopped by the game while she was in Sendai. She took this. So it’s real? This is _real?”_

Any small fraction of relief Atsumu might have felt is instantly swept away by the look on their father’s face. It’s not often that Atsumu is at a loss for what to say. He looks at Osamu, then turns away again, remembering how even that had upset their parents so greatly.

“Yes,” says Osamu. His voice is firm with a conviction Atsumu doesn’t feel. “It’s real.”

“Why?”

“Because—” Osamu trails off. The conviction is gone, replaced with a shaky, but honest uncertainty. “We wanted to. Because that’s how we feel. About each other.” 

“How long has this been going on?”

“A year or so,” says Osamu. It’s not exactly a lie. Leaving out all those fumbling misadventures in their shared bedroom back in high school was probably for the best. Back then, what went on between them didn’t have a name. It took a long while for them to realize the feeling that had bloomed between them was here to stay.

“A year?” 

Their mother storms out of her room, eyebrows knotted tightly together, poised like she might combust at any time. 

“A _year?_ All those times we stopped by the onigiri shop? Or watched your games? All of those dinners we had together? What were you two doing— playing footsie under the table?”

 _Oh,_ now _she shows up,_ Atsumu thinks bitterly to himself. Leaving the hardest part of the conversation to their father, and chiming in with her morals at the opportune time. And then, instantly, he feels sick to his stomach for having that thought about his own _mother._ He digs his nails into the palms of his hands.

“You make it sound like it’s just physical.” It's the wrong thing to say. Atsumu knows it as soon as the words leave his mouth and his stomach drops like a stone.

The sound that tears from their mother’s throat is ugly and cruel. “Oh— do _not_ even put the thought into my head. You two are—! You _disgust_ me! I’ve never been more ashamed in my life. What did we do wrong? Where did we go wrong in raising you?”

Atsumu bites down on his lip so hard he tastes blood. 

“Nothing,” says Osamu. “If there’s any fault, then it lies with us.” 

“Here’s what you’ll do,” says their father, visibly trying to regain control over the situation. “You’re going to stop this— whatever this is. Apologize to your mother and I. We’ll never speak of it again. We’ll go back to being a normal family. Are we clear?” 

“No,” says Atsumu.

Both their parents’ eyes fixate on him. 

“What did you say?” An outburst, as expected, from their mother.

Atsumu squares his shoulders. “I said no.”

In the back of his mind, he thinks that he probably got his stubborn streak from her. 

“Then leave,” she says, voice laced with cold anger. “Get out. Both of you. And don’t come back.”

The urge to vomit comes back as he watches her cross the room and peel everything off the walls. The MSBY 13 jersey. The newspaper article featuring Onigiri Miya. The trophy they’d won in their third and final year at Nationals. And that framed photo of the four of them at Tokyo Disneyland, poised in a perpetual, dreamlike happiness.

“Thanks for the meal,” says Osamu. His voice is calm, but he shoves his chair back in with so much force it almost topples over. He grabs his jacket off the chair, and takes Atsumu by the wrist so hard he fears it will break and he’ll never be able to toss a ball again.

Atsumu is dragged to the door, where he goes through the automatic motions of lacing up his shoes. There’s a scuff mark on the front door where Atsumu kicked it once when he was twelve. He'd sworn up and down that Osamu did it. 

“I kissed him first,” says Atsumu. “So if you gotta blame somebody, blame me.”

“Oh, _shut up,”_ says Osamu, so now everyone in the room is angry with Atsumu, which is just fantastic. 

The last-ditch plea falls on deaf ears, anyway. Their mother stalks back into her room and slams the door shut. The sound rings in Atsumu’s eardrums, sharp and final.

Their father watches with a sort of tired resignation as Osamu wrenches open the front door.

“She doesn’t mean that,” he says. “Give her some time. It’s not too late to say sorry. Make up for all the hurt you caused her. She’ll come around.”

Osamu drags Atsumu out the door, and slams it shut behind them.

They walk, in silence, down the familiar street of their childhood home. Atsumu can pinpoint the exact place where, at age four, he fell and skinned his knee and his mother bent down to hold him in her arms and kiss it better.

 _She’ll come around._ It’s neither an offering, nor reassurance. _She’ll come around._ But only if they give in.

They round the corner, but the tense line of Osamu’s shoulders doesn’t subside. Instead, as they reach a secluded alleyway, he stops walking entirely and his shoulders begin to shake, hands flying up to cover his face. 

Atsumu stops, too. He hears the muffled sobbing before he sees the tears, dripping out through the cracks between Osamu’s fingers, splattering messily on the concrete sidewalk. 

The sight of Osamu’s shattered composure shoves a jagged edge into his chest. Every skinned knee he's ever had pales in comparison to this.

“Hey,” says Atsumu weakly. He rests a hand on Osamu’s back, but Osamu only shakes harder. The sound he lets out tears right through Atsumu’s chest, in a way he doesn’t think can ever be repaired.

“‘Samu,” he tries again. Quieter, softer. He wraps his arms around Osamu, and Osamu finally removes his hands from his face to grasp tightly at the back of Atsumu’s shirt, burying his face in Atsumu’s shoulder, shaking like a dog left out in the rain.

Atsumu always believed there was nothing you couldn’t do if you tried. Losing just meant you needed to practice twice as hard. Failure just meant you lacked _hunger_ for success. But this? The ball is out of his court. If there is a scoreboard, it’s already broken, rigged so that neither of them can ever win. 

Words tumble out of his mouth, rapid-fire efforts to slap a band-aid on a broken limb:

“It’s okay.” 

It’s not, but what else can he say? 

“I’ve got you. I’m here.” 

That much is true, at least. 

“Let’s go home, alright?” 

Even if _home_ meant only a fraction of the family they grew up with. 

Osamu stops shaking eventually. Atsumu’s left shoulder is soaked through when Osamu lifts his head and nods wordlessly.

The sky is pitch black. The streets are quiet, but there are still people milling about, so they walk with an appropriate amount of space between them. Lit by the glow of streetlights and the occasional car, they find their way to the bus stop. And then, home.

Osamu is quiet the whole way back. They are comfortable in silence, even if banter is their default setting. But sometimes there’s just nothing to say.

Atsumu unlocks the door and opens it. They step in, and Atsumu locks the door behind them. Osamu steps over to the kitchen sink to wash his face. 

“‘Tsumu? I’m goin’ to bed,” he says. His eyes are red-rimmed, but he looks like himself again. 

“‘Kay.”

“You should come too. It’s late.” 

“Sure,” says Atsumu. Now _he’s_ the one who doesn’t sound like himself. He clears his throat. “I’m just gonna… grab a beer, or something, first.” 

“Alright.”

Osamu’s footsteps fade off into the distance. Atsumu is able to open the fridge, is able to wrap his hand around a can of Kirin and pull it out, and set it on the kitchen counter. But when he tries to crack it open, he finds that he can’t. His hands are shaking too badly. It's a slap in the face. He’s Miya Atsumu, the starting setter of the MSBY Black Jackals, known for his service aces and tosses that never waver— and he can’t fucking open a can of beer. 

He slams his fist down on the counter. The beer can rattles. He breathes in through gritted teeth, watching the can in front of him blur as his eyes fill up with unwanted moisture.

Footsteps approach from behind him. “‘Tsumu?”

“I can’t open it,” he blurts out. Even with his hands balled into fists, they’re still shaking. He hates it. He hates not having control over something that should have come so easily.

“Let me,” says Osamu. He presses his back to Atsumu’s, reaches around him, and pops the can open. 

Nothing that was once _easy_ is anymore. It feels like vertigo, like the ground is tilting beneath him and he’s too tired to stand. He holds his breath like that will stop the tears from falling down his face.

“You can cry too, y’know,” says Osamu. “Not like there’s a rule against it, or anything. If you were tryin' to _win_ against me, you already did.” 

Atsumu snuffs out a laugh. Maybe he was trying to be magnanimous by holding it together for Osamu’s sake. Or maybe he _was_ being competitive, trying to be the last one to cry. It doesn’t really matter in the end. He gives in and turns around to face Osamu, buries his face in his brother's shoulder, and lets go. Osamu holds him steady with a hand in his hair, the other rubbing circles in his back.

“What should we do?” he says into the fabric of Osamu’s shirt.

Osamu seems to mull on that. “Do you want to stop what we’re doing?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

It feels weird when spoken aloud, like one of those options on a multiple choice test that was so far from the right answer it was laughable. 

“Then, do we really have to do anything?” says Osamu.

Atsumu looks up. “Huh?”

“I mean,” says Osamu, fumbling for the words. “Everybody hated you in high school, and you turned out okay.”

It’s different, being hated by the people who raised you with all the love they could muster, until you suddenly didn’t meet the condition to receive that love anymore. 

Atsumu says, “You didn’t hate me.”

“Wrong. I hated you the _most.”_

Atsumu snorts and swipes the back of his hand across his face. “Yeah, you’re right,” he concedes. “We don’t have to change anything. We’ll just be careful.”

“Yeah,” says Osamu. Holding Atsumu by the wrist, he heads off to their bedroom. “C’mon, let’s go to bed. It’s late.” 

They plop themselves down on the bed, and suddenly it’s like all the energy has left Atsumu’s body, like he’s just played the most intense game of his life and lost. He lays back and looks up at the ceiling.

“Do you have practice tomorrow?” says Osamu.

“Nah. I have the day off.”

“Cool,” says Osamu. “I’ll take the day off work. We can do whatever we want.”

Atsumu cracks a smile. “Y’know that when you say _do whatever we want,_ that just means _each other,_ right?” 

“Well yeah,” says Osamu. “If we’re already goin’ to hell, might as well enjoy the ride.” 

“What do you know,” says Atsumu. “You actually _can_ say smart things sometimes.” 

Osamu elbows him in the side. Atsumu kicks him in the shin. And then, simultaneously, the two of them let out a burst of laughter. It’s still a little bit hollow, but it rings fuller than either of them have felt all night. It’s not enough, but maybe it’s the closest they'll ever get.

“...‘Samu?”

“Yeah?”

“Good night.”

“...Good night, ‘Tsumu.” 


End file.
